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Tag Archives: spring

This is our garden, first thing in the morning. You can see the sun hitting the East boundary. This means our garden faces North. Not good.

Last year, our garden took a serious battering while the builders were in, building our kitchen extension. The result was a lawn which was more mud than grass. Patches of the garden had been completely covered for months at a time, and moving a couple of planters meant more bald patches.

With the sun finally making an appearance, I was able to sow some more grass seed to cover the bald patches. Planting grass seed is slower than covering the patches with turf, but gives a good result, which is evenly blended in.

I also managed to give the lawn its first mow of the summer. Over the last few years, I have learned that the most important thing in lawn care is regular mowing. So I’m aiming to mow the lawn weekly (avoiding the newly sown patches) to even it out and encourage the soft grass to grow.

There used to be a planter on this decking; we’ve moved it and I’ve planted our herbs in pots. Some of the lavender will be planted out into the borders when I find the time. The daffodils are really over (these were outside the front door until they had finished blooming), but the tulips are just coming through.

It’s taken a while, but spring has finally sprung.

Other plans for the garden will include vegetables, mostly beans and salad this year. I like to grow things which are more unusual, very seasonal or more expensive in the supermarket. I don’t see much point in growing onions when you can buy 12 for £1, when the sets would probably cost that much! However, we eat a lot of salad leaves over the summer, so spending a few pounds on seeds which will feed us for several weeks is worth it. I’ll also grow broad and runner beans for their seasonality, and courgettes and squash.

So far, the only seeds I’ve sown are the broad beans, which are just pushing through the soil. Once the bank holiday weekend has passed, I’m looking forward to sowing the rest of the seeds – just have to wait until the last frost before they get planted out.